Happy Tuesday folks! Unfortunately, I haven’t had the best weekend so I thought I would take this opportunity to try to explain what it’s like to have a “bad time” when you have BPD and Bipolar. It’s easy for me to explain factual things that have happened but explaining feelings and emotions is a lot trickier. It’s difficult for a lot of people but trying to verbalise and explain the inner workings of my mashed up brain is quite the foreign concept so bear with me on this one!

On Friday I was already feeling what I would say is flat. My post on Friday already said that I wasn’t all that great. I kept thinking of that dream to try to get me through the day. I tried to use the techniques that I learned in the Mindfulness Group. The key one there was breathing. I know that sounds completely daft but it is concentrated, slow breathing. It’s turning off all electronic devices, finding somewhere quiet and just spending a few minutes concentrating on your breathing, just in and out. Deep breaths. It is so surprising how calming and what a positive impact that can have. It helped a little for me on Friday but I was still feeling as if I could burst into tears.

Nothing had happened on Friday to make me feel like that. I didn’t have a “trigger” (more about them in future posts). I hadn’t seen someone I didn’t want to, I hadn’t had a bad phone call, I hadn’t received any stressful post, emails or text messages. It just happens. It is just a time where you just feel empty, a little numb to what is going on around you and you just feel in pain. The pain feels so heightened and intense and you just try to find ways of processing it and getting rid of it. This is sometimes when you disassociate also to take yourself out of the equation, desperately trying not to feel pain. As you will have probably noted, I am writing this in the third person because it’s easier for me to discuss it if I’m not directly relating it to me. It probably doesn’t help me in the long run but, right now, it’s working for me.

The biggest thing that you have to remember, and for those reading this who don’t have issues themselves but know someone who does, it’s okay for that person to not be okay. Sometimes you do just have to go through it and be in it and not try to fight it. Sometimes you just have to manage it and that’s absolutely okay. You are not being lazy if you don’t do the housework – it will still be there tomorrow. It’s okay if all you can manage is making sure you’ve eaten and taken your medication. It’s okay if all you can manage is picking the kids up from school and getting their tea ready. That’s absolutely okay.

So for the remainder of Friday, all I could manage was just getting through the day. I called Mum. I told her I was having a tough time but there’s nothing she can do to help. I knew it was one of those that I just had to get through and hope that Saturday would be a better day. I made sure I took my medication and I spent Friday evening watching a good old action film on TV (the first Lethal Weapon film to be precise) and then went to bed. I couldn’t wait to get to bed because I wanted to hide but I knew if I went too early, I would be up early on Saturday morning which, if I was still bad, would make the day even longer.

Saturday turned out to be not so brilliant too. I had to go out first thing because the cat had to go to the vets. Thankfully I was there and back in an hour and I knew then I could hibernate for the rest of the day at home and didn’t have to go out of the front door. I had all the supplies that I needed – food and cigarettes and I had more than enough cat food too so I didn’t need to open that front door for the rest of the day.  I didn’t.

I knew I had housework to do. I knew I had to start preparing entries for the blog. I knew I had to check my bank account and check that my bills were paid but I had absolutely no desire to do any of it. I started off trying to distract myself and to try to help boost me up by watching some cricket. The 20/20 Blast Finals Day was on and David Lloyd’s commentary (aka Bumble) is always funny so I thought I’d try that. No joy. The longer I watched the cricket, the further I went downward so I curled up on the sofa and adopted another approach. I slept. I missed the first game of Finals Day but woke up to watch the second game. By this point the cat had forgiven me for taking her to the vets and wanted feeding and fussing. I didn’t even do the washing up. There wasn’t much there, I just couldn’t face it.

Not even having the energy to complete the simplest of tasks is sometimes devastating and pushes you further on the spiral downward. I felt exhausted from just getting up and going out the door for that 1 hour on Saturday morning. That was hard work enough for me. Having to interact with the team at the vets and the vet himself and making sure that the cat was safe for the journey there and home. It literally hurt my head by the time I got home. I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on the sofa just being “in it” I suppose. The waves of pain and frustration came over me but I just continued with the breathing and resisted the temptation of self-harming. That is an achievement for me to not self-harm. I did eat though. Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse.

Sunday was a better day. I still didn’t feel great when I got up but I did feel that I could push myself to at least get the housework done and some of the ironing. I adopted my approach of some very loud rock music to try to boost my energy level. Def Leppard, Thunder, FM and Whitesnake got a hammering and I got the kitchen, bathroom, living room and dining room tidied, cleaned, vacuumed and the floors mopped. I went through the house reasonably swiftly so I built up quite a sweat so I gladly had a shower. Sometimes, that’s a challenge and also I normally self-harm after a shower because I like to be clean before I do that. Thankfully I timed the shower to be quite last minute before going out to see my friend, Jill and her husband Jack for dinner. I don’t have to pretend to be okay in front of Jack and Jill. They have been through everything with me since I separated from Dave so they have seen me at my worst and on the road to recovery. I can totally be myself with Jack and Jill whether that’s good, bad or indifferent. There’s no judgement from them and I can literally just “be”.

Yesterday was altogether different. Although I still didn’t feel like I was ready to swing off the chandeliers, I had to catch up on everything that I didn’t get done over the weekend! That’s when the feelings of failure and guilt can come crashing over you because you know that you had so much to get done and you didn’t achieve half of it. You feel like you’ve failed as a human being, as a housekeeper, as a regular person. Yesterday required more loud rock music to get the ironing finished but I still felt what I call “tetchy”. I couldn’t settle. I couldn’t just sit down. That was the frustration at not completing my to-do list over the weekend and feeling guilty for wasting the two days of the weekend. I know that when I’m “tetchy”, I’ll pace and I want to self-harm. I took myself out of that environment. I called Jill and asked if she would like to go for a walk. It was a beautiful afternoon in London yesterday so we went out for an hour or so and went for a walk in the park. It was what I needed. Fresh air to clear the cobwebs and to let the feelings of frustration and guilt pass and fade away.

I’ve woken up on a more even keel today. I hope that what I’ve written goes some way to explaining what it’s like to have a “bad day” or a “bad run”. Sometimes you can fight it successfully, sometimes you just have to go with it. Unfortunately, you do just have to go through a lot of them before you can really understand what works best for you at managing them. However, the bad runs do always pass. When you’re in it, it doesn’t feel like it but when you’re coming out the other side, you know that you’ve got through another one.

A little cheery story today to hopefully bring a smile to someone’s face.  I had a pretty rough day yesterday and today hasn’t been great all in all so reminding myself of this has helped.  Sometimes, it really is the smallest things that can make a huge difference to a bad day.

Among the many side effects that you can suffer from taking a combination of medications, one of them is that you can have some quite weird, wonderful and vivid dreams. I had one such dream the other night.

As a young girl I would daydream of Prince Charming sweeping me off my feet on his white steed and riding off into the sunset. I’m not sure many girls haven’t. Now, Prince Charming could take many forms. It generally tended to be the favourite pop star or film star of the day or the first boy you had a crush on. I haven’t had a Prince Charming rescue dream for many, many years.

So, the other night I’m finally in the land of nod and I’m in my dream where I’m being rescued from a volatile relationship. All very 21st Century. This is where it gets interesting. My Prince Charming arrives. Do I get a suave George Clooney? No. Do I get a chisel chinned Brad Pitt? No. Do I even get a rugged Jason Statham or any of the other members of “The Expendables” films cast? Hell No. I don’t even get the devilishly handsome and wonderfully voiced Sir Patrick Stewart.

Who do I get? Michael Vaughan. Now for those of you who know this name, please feel free to carry on reading once you’ve stopped laughing.

For the uninitiated, Michael Vaughan is the former Captain of the England Cricket Team. Now don’t get me wrong, I am a great admirer of Michael Vaughan. He was the Captain of the team when we won the Ashes in 2005, the first time we’d won in nearly 20 years. He was an impressive batsman in his day and I’ve enjoyed his commentary since his retirement from cricket.

Within that 2005 England cricket squad, there were players who were very easy on the eye. The likes of Freddie Flintoff, Kevin Petersen, Steve Harmison, Jimmy Anderson, Paul Collingwood and so on. They were a good-looking squad who eradicated 18 years of pain for any devoted England Cricket fan. Many of the players of that time can be seen on TV or heard on commentary on a regular basis too. So I still have no idea why Michael Vaughan would be at the forefront of my subconscious and become my Prince Charming. I hadn’t even seen him on TV or heard his commentary in the run up to having this dream.  Even in my dream I was shocked to find that Michael Vaughan was my Prince Charming.

However, I must say that he was bloody fantastic as Prince Charming. I felt extremely safe and secure in the dream which I don’t have regularly in day to day life. I felt loved and wanted which I struggle with in day to day life. The best feelings I had in my dream were contentment, peace and happiness. They are the feelings that I most crave in my daily life.

So whilst I may have woken up wondering how Michael Vaughan got into my head, I had a smile on my face and, for the first time in months, a feeling of calm and positivity that even I might one day crack this life business and find my Prince Charming. A big thank you to Michael for that but I will resist adding Prince Charming to your list of many achievements on your Wikipedia page.

In September 2010 I was admitted for the first time into my local psychiatric hospital. I went voluntarily; I wasn’t sectioned. Over the Summer of 2010, my mental health had deteriorated and I basically suffered a complete breakdown. We are talking full on crying, screaming, total rocking backwards and forwards and a drastic increase in my levels of self-harming. I could no longer guarantee my own safety.

I wasn’t going to work. Up to that point, work had always been my sanctuary. It didn’t matter how bad I felt, I would go to work. It was the best distraction of them all. I didn’t have to deal with how I was feeling. I could go to work and just dive into a big word document, fat spreadsheet or juicy PowerPoint presentation. I didn’t have to feel at work; I just got on with it. That was no longer working. Most days, I couldn’t get out of bed. I wouldn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t want to go out. I wouldn’t shower and spent most days in my PJs. Dave (the now ex-Husband) was still my boyfriend at the time.

As work was no longer the safe haven it had always been, I knew I was in trouble. I booked an appointment with my GP who onwardly referred me to my mental health team for my borough. I then saw them for an assessment and initially I was seen daily by the Home Treatment Team. I agreed to start taking medication. I had always resisted to that point, but I also knew that this was far worse than I had ever been before. I wasn’t getting any better so Dave and I had a very frank discussion with Fiona from the Home Treatment Team one Friday evening. Fiona told me the process of voluntarily going into the hospital. She went through everything with us. We said that we would consider it over the weekend and tell her my decision on Sunday when she came to visit.

The biggest thing I had to keep asking myself was “could I guarantee my own safety”? I have never been a danger to others, always to myself. I already had a history of a couple of suicide attempts up to that point and the self-harming was gathering pace at an alarming rate for me. I couldn’t believe how much emotional pain I was in and everything I had always done up to that point to ease and stop emotional pain was no longer working. Dave and I decided that I was going in. Fiona arranged it all and I was admitted on the Monday morning. I phoned and told Mum and she came down too for the admission.

There will be a separate entry on what it is actually like to stay in one of those hospitals but, suffice to say, it is no holiday camp, even though I have come to call it Nutlins! For those of you who may be reading this from outside of the UK, there is a company who run holiday camps around the country who have a similar name, but I don’t for one minute want to publish their name here and then people think that their holiday camps are associated with psychiatric patients! I have had some great times over the years staying at various of their holiday camps.

I spent just over two weeks in the hospital on the first admission in 2010. When I was discharged, I was on new medication, I had the BPD diagnosis and I felt somewhat recharged and ready to fight. I came out on the Thursday and was back at work the following Monday. That was a huge mistake. I thought I could just dive straight back in and I’d be absolutely fine again. I struggled for another year and then in September 2011, I was admitted back into the hospital again. I couldn’t guarantee my safety again. Partially I think I was running away also. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t gone back to “normal” after my last admission. Dave and I got married in 2011 so, theoretically, I should have been on top of the world. Why was I still so depressed? Why was I still self-harming? I was now on medication. Surely, I should be swinging off the chandeliers?  To use one of the most common questions of people suffering with depression: “what have you got to be depressed about?”

The second admission was for longer. It was during that admission that I realised that I’d had a massive breakdown the year before and that going back to work that quickly was too much. I needed to take a step back. My brain had told me that it was done being silenced and that I needed to process what was going on inside it and deal with 20+ years of built up emotions, anger and frustrations, process it all and then be able to move on.

So, I didn’t go back to work and ultimately never returned to my (now former) employer. I spent the following years going through various treatments, my sister moved 125 miles away, one of my dear friends was killed and my ex-Husband left me for my ex-best friend.

Which brings me to today. I want to fight again. I’m not brilliant, I’m not standing on top of the World but I’m in a better place than I have been for a long time. I’m encouraged by the fact that Dave leaving me for Alexis didn’t result in me being admitted into the hospital again. Dear friends and my family were incredibly worried in the early stages as to what effect their betrayal would have on me. Fear not, there will be blog entries about that and all will be explained as to why the ex-best friend has been called Alexis for the purposes of this blog. I’ve lost weight since Dave and I split up. I’m in better physical condition than I have been for a number of years. My blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels have all lowered to “normal to low” parameters since Dave and I split.

I want to work again. I want to be a “functioning member of society”. Plus the fact I kind of have to work now because Government benefits aren’t sufficient to pay my household bills living in London. I don’t have a mysterious benefactor who will cover all of my expenses and my savings are disappearing at a rapid rate of knots. I don’t want to be on benefits. Granted, they are extremely valuable right now but then I have paid a ridiculous amount of Tax and National Insurance over the years! Obviously, I can’t go diving back into Monday to Friday full time work after being out of the system for nearly seven years so it’s got to be something that I can ease myself back into and allows for the fact that I’m going to have bad days still. What about my skills? Have I lost my ability to reformat a Word document, run macros in a spreadsheet or create a PowerPoint presentation from notes on a scrap of paper?

I know there is no cure for BPD and my side orders of Bipolar and Depression. It’s something that I know now I’ve got to own and manage and not let it own and manage me. However, with the support of my family, my dear friends and my “London family” (more on them in future entries), I know I’ll get there. This is the journey.

It’s super easy for me to just brazenly declare that I have Borderline Personality Disorder but just what the heck is it?

According to the UK Mind website (www.mind.org.uk), you may well be diagnosed with BPD if you can answer “yes” to at least five of the following statements:

1. “You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening.
2. You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad).
3. You don’t have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you’re with.
4. You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships.
5. You feel empty a lot of the time.
6. You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously).
7. You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings.
8. You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control.
9. When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation.”

(Source: www.mind.org.uk – September 2018)

 (There is a pdf on the Mind website that goes into great detail about BPD and other mental health issues.)

The theory is that if you have experienced at least five of these and they have lasted a long time or have had a large impact on your life, it’s likely you will get a BPD diagnosis.

I have found over the years that the main symptom of BPD that is focused on by counsellors and groups is a fear of abandonment.  Now, I’ve never had that feeling and would certainly never do anything to stop it happening.  This is absolutely highlighted by my recent divorce.  I was married for nearly five years, together with my ex-Husband for just short of 7 years.  For the purposes of this blog, I’ll call him Dave as I don’t think he deserves any publicity for what he did.  There will be more on that epic soap opera in future entries!

He started off by saying that he wanted to separate.  Don’t get me wrong, I was devastated but, up to that point, I didn’t have a clue that he was about to leave.  We separated for eight weeks and then he said that he wanted a divorce.  I only saw him briefly during those eight weeks.  The only real contact we had been via email and text message regarding household stuff and post that had come in, just boring normal stuff.  At no point during those eight weeks did I beg, plead or camp out at his family’s homes hoping to see him or beg him to come home.  In that whole time, I sent one text message to him saying “I want you to come home”.  That was it.  Nothing more.  I didn’t chase him after sending that text message.

The day he said he wanted a divorce, I stayed very calm and just said that I would start the divorce proceedings, he would pay for it and arrangements would have to be made for him to collect his belongings.  That was it.

I will absolutely freely admit that numbers 2-8 are me all over.  Yes, I can binge eat for GB.  If it was an Olympic Sport, count me in.  I don’t do drugs though, I never have done although I do smoke cigarettes.  I have been known to drive dangerously when I’m on my own but never with anyone else in the car.

Anger is the worst emotion for me.  I cannot process it.  I have no idea how.  I generally tend to suppress it, internalise it, somehow make it all my fault so it triggers the feelings of guilt and failure so that I can then self-harm or binge eat to release that pain rather than deal with the underlying anger that was there in the first place.  To be fair, I think that’s quite an impressive trick of those of us with BPD that we can transfer anger at somebody else’s actions into our fault and guilt.  It’s a skill which I’ve mastered over the years.

Numbers 2-8 have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.  I’ve been a binge eater since forever quite frankly.  I’ve always felt “different”, that something just “wasn’t quite right” with me.  During the school years, I never really did have the best friend.  I was the one that my chums sat next to when they’d had a bust up with the bestie.  Maybe, that was an element of the fear of abandonment so I didn’t put myself forward as a bestie.

After school, I used to walk up to my Dad’s shop and he would take my Sister and I home.  I would always get sweets at the shop on the way home and squirrel them away and eat them of a night time.  Then in the sixth form when we were allowed to go out during breaks and lunchtime, I would always go the shop at the top of the road and buy loads of junk food, sweets, chocolate and all of that good stuff.  I still have a sweets and chocolate problem to this day.  I can seriously face plant some ice cream too when I’m in a bad way.

The fact that I don’t suffer with the factor that I consider the main symptom has always confused me about my diagnosis.  BPD is incredibly difficult to diagnose and it can cut across a broad spectrum of issues.  This is why I have the side diagnosis of Bipolar coupled with severe depression.

If you are reading this unsure as to whether or not you have BPD or if your BPD diagnosis is correct, don’t worry right now.  BPD can be coupled with other mental health issues.  If you have already been diagnosed with BPD, speak to your mental health professional for further advice on whether you may have an additional issue.  If you haven’t been diagnosed yet and you’re just not sure “what’s wrong with you” well, firstly, there is nothing wrong with you!  You just need some help.  Please read the information on BPD from Mind on their website – it might help steer you in the right direction.

Above all, if you’re not sure what you’re feeling, go and see your GP, start the process, start getting help.  Start living again.

 

Hello and welcome to my BPDLife blog. I have been living with my BPD diagnosis for over 7 years now with a side diagnosis of Bipolar. I’m nearly in my mid-40s, have worked since I was 16 years old right up until my second admission into my local psychiatric hospital in 2011. I haven’t been able to return to work since. I live in London, England.

I am considered high functioning. I call myself a high functioning nutter. I am not addicted to drugs or alcohol. I barely drink. I can, on some days, keep myself clean and tidy and predominantly safe. I don’t spend my entire day sitting in a chair, rocking backwards and forwards gently dribbling although on occasion, it has been known.

Most of my days are spent just trying to get through the day. I consider it a major achievement to pay my bills on time. I live on my own since my marriage broke down. It is exhausting just to keep on top of that. There are days I sleep too much, days I don’t sleep at all. Days I don’t eat, days I eat too much. To be fair, it’s mostly the latter. There are days I self-harm. There are days I don’t speak to anybody, there are days I can be fully engaging. I can spend days at a time in the house basically living in my pyjamas and not moving off the sofa. Then there are the days that I feel I can achieve so much.

I consider myself to be self-aware. I have been through various group and individual treatments and am currently taking Venlafaxine on a daily basis. I believe I am intelligent and articulate and that is one of the reasons why I decided to start this blog. One of the things that I learned in Group Mindfulness treatment I attended a few years ago was to do different things and do things differently. I am trying to employ that now. I wanted to start this blog not only to selfishly help process my own feelings and frustrations, but to also let others know in the same situation that they are not alone. If people read this who don’t have BPD but know a friend or relative who does have BPD, then hopefully this blog may also give them some insight into what life is like dealing with BPD on a daily basis and reacting to big life events.

This Blog is also to share the journey I am about to go on.  I am trying to return to work and I have recently got divorced so I’m starting again at nearly mid-40 and doing it all with Mental Health Issues.  This is going to be tough.  There will be highs, there will be lows.  There will be days where everything I touch turns to gold and there will be days that I do genuinely want to die to stop the pain.

I warn you in advance that there will be discussions of self-harm, suicide attempts and all potential triggers for these two events. There will be sarcasm, anger, self-deprecation and frustration throughout these blog entries. Fingers crossed, there will be some giggles too.  The views and opinions expressed in these blog entries are mine and mine only.  I will also add links and recommendations of websites, books and things that I have found usual as I plough on through this journey and may be of use to some of you out there.

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton